Clio

This book presents for the modern reader Martha Fowke Sansom's autobiography Clio, an important document for our understanding of early women writers. Written in 1723, when she was in her mid-thirties, but not published until 1752, Clio offers an engaging and illuminating account of an independent woman writer who is remarkably frank about her attitudes to love and marriage. Although the work can be read simply and enjoyably for its own sake, this annotated edition provides a wealth of material that puts this fascinating text in its social and literary context. In Clio Fowke gives a careful analysis of the factors that formed her as a writer: her father's encouragement, her role as the composer of his love letters, the reading of romances, schooling, exposure to writers ranging from Ovid to Abraham Cowley, and later, an enthusiastic plunge into the work of Shakespeare. She documents aspects of social life, everything from petty annoyances to grand dramas of passion. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw widespread changes in social attitudes, and many women briefly saw the possibility of new ambitions for personal liberty, achievement, and the pursuit of happiness. Fowke's account of her life and its context illuminate this historical moment. The work details with flair, skill, irony, and passion a woman's sense of her self as a writer, as well as her emotional, social, and sexual experience. Clio is a lively, even comic, narrative, full of precise detail about social interactions. Fowke's confident presentation of self contains much to challenge assumptions about eighteenth-century women.